Zero Day

Staying on top of the latest in software/hardware security research, vulnerabilities, threats and computer attacks.

Zack Whittaker

Zack Whittaker is the security editor for ZDNet, covering cyber and national security. He is based in New York newsroom, and is also found on sister-sites CNET and CBS News. You can reach him with his PGP key: EB6CEEA5.

Charlie Osborne

Charlie Osborne, a medical anthropologist who studied at the University of Kent, UK, is a journalist, freelance photographer and former teacher.
She has spent years travelling and working across Europe and the Middle East as a teacher, and has been involved in the running of businesses ranging from media and events to B2B sales. Charlie currently works as a journalist and photographer -- with the occasional design piece -- and writes for ZDNet, CNET and SmartPlanet.
She has particular interests in social media, IP law, social engineering and security.

I don't know about you but after watching the video and reading the reports about DefCon's outing of Dateline NBC producer Michelle Madigan, I came away with an uncomfortable feeling that it was rather childish, over-the-top and unnecessary.

The intellectual cat-and-mouse tussle over hiding and finding virtual machine rootkits has hit a new gear with a team of researchers dismissing the notion of "100 percent undetectable" malware and the release of source code for a new "Blue Pill" rootkit.

At the first ever Pwnie Awards announced at the Black Hat Briefings here, a team of well-known researchers picked the OpenBSD team from a list of four software vendors -- BMC, EnCase and Norman AntiVirus were the others -- in the "lamest vendor response" category.

Exactly a week after admitting that Firefox was just as guilty as Internet Explorer when it comes to passing dangerous data to third party applications, the open-source group shipped Firefox 2.0.0.6 with workarounds and patches for two related vulnerabilities.

Trend Micro today rolled out a new Botnet Identification Service (BIS) to help find botnet command-and-control servers and block communications between them and the zombie PCs they control. It'll help mitigate some networks but don't look for it to make a serious difference.

Thomas Dullien, aka "Halvar Flake," a prominent security researcher who has been a fixture at the annual Black Hat security conference, has been denied entry into the U.S. to attend and conduct training at this year's confab.